


blankets and brain melting fevers

by hailingstars



Series: irondad bingo [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Fever, He's just worried about his boy, Irondad Bingo 2019, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Protective Tony Stark, Sick Peter Parker, Sickfic, Tony Is So Extra, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 14:59:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19359319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: Tony jumps into dad mode when he figures out Peter stayed home from school sick and takes care of him.Irondad Bingo: Whump: Fever





	blankets and brain melting fevers

**Author's Note:**

> I remember saying all my stories for bingo were going to be post endgame fix-its, but this one just needed to be written. Its set before infinity war, when Peter and Tony's relationship was still fresh and Tony was still kind of awkward as his dad
> 
> enjoooyy!!

Peter was lying face down on his bed, buried in covers, burning up but also shivering, when Mr. Stark started knocking on the front door. He knew it was Mr. Stark, without a doubt, from his frantic, erratic heartbeat, and from the way the pounding got louder and more demanding the longer Peter tried to ignore it.

He groaned, crawled out from under his pile of blankets, and tossed his legs over the side of the bed, losing balance and almost faceplanting into the carpet as he did. He steadied himself, stood up, then dragged his feet out of his room and through the hallway.

Mr. Stark had been in mid-knock when Peter answered the door. He paused, then dropped his hand, eventually using it to support the brown paper bag he had cradled in the opposite arm.

“Hey Mr. Stark,” said Peter. His voice came out raspy and weak, and his throat ached with every syllable. “What are you doing here?”

He held up the brown paper bag. “I got an alert that you weren’t at school today, then aunt hottie told me you were sick, so I brought soup.” 

Mr. Stark blew past him, entering the apartment without permission, and leaving Peter with his hand on the door, staring dumbly into the empty hallway and trying to figure out how and why Tony Stark got alerts when he didn’t show up to school.

“You made soup?” asked Peter, turning. Mr. Stark put the bag down on the dining room table and took out a few steaming containers.

“I _bought_ soup.” 

“Oh.” 

Peter forced himself to move across the apartment again, but he collapsed into a dining room chair the first change he got. He watched with achy eyes as Mr. Stark arranged bowls and utensils, and he hoped Mr. Stark didn’t plan on forcing feeding him. Peter definitely wasn’t eating that stuff on his own, no matter what fancy restaurant Mr. Stark had got it from. 

The smell made him want to gag, and if there was anything left in his stomach, he was sure he would have lost it the second Mr. Stark took the plastic lid off one of the containers. 

“Peter.” 

His eyes snapped back up and found Mr. Stark’s eyes. The edges of his face blurred. 

“What?”

“The door,” stated Mr. Stark. Peter blinked up at him. His face came back into focus, but Peter still didn’t understand why he was saying door. “Jesus, kid, the door, you left it open.”

He turned in his chair and saw the door to his apartment, standing wide open, exactly like he left. Slowly, and with effort, Peter started to stand, but Mr. Stark pushed him back in the chair with a hand on his shoulder. 

“No, stay there, I don’t want you passing out on my watch,” said Mr. Stark. “I’ll get it.”

He marched across the apartment, and when he came back to the table, pressed his hand against Peter’s forehead.

“You’re burning up,” said Mr. Stark, as he pulled back his hand and took something out from the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

“I kn-“

A thermometer was shoved in his mouth.

He leveled a glare at Mr. Stark, but clamped his mouth shut and put his tongue over the end of the thermometer, anyway. It felt like hours until the thermometer started beeping and Mr. Stark popped it out of his mouth. He squinted and frowned at whatever numbers he saw printed across the small screen. 

“I don’t like how high that fever is.” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“You need to see a doctor.” 

“What? No – no, I don’t,” Peter stammered. “I need to see my bed.” 

“I’m gonna take you to the tower and have the medical staff look over you.”

“Mr. Stark…” He made his eyes big and wide. He tried to look more pathetic than he already did, but still, he could see it on Mr. Stark’s face. His dreams of going back to sleep were about to be crushed. 

“No pouting,” he told him, tugging him up and out of the chair by his elbow. “Puppy dog eyes will get you nowhere if you’re dead. Come on, I’ll help you get your shoes on.”

Peter let Mr. Stark drag him back down the hallway and towards his bedroom. He complained the way. It was just a virus. It wasn’t a big deal. Mr. Stark didn’t seem to hear him. His protests fell on deaf ears.

Mr. Stark lowered him onto his bed, then looked around Peter’s messy bedroom. 

“How do you find anything in here?” asked Mr. Stark. Peter replied with a shrug. “Where’s your shoes?” 

He stretched out his arm and pointed towards his closet, sending Mr. Stark on his hunt. As soon as he had his back turned, Peter laid back down and burrowed under his favorite blanket, or at least, his favorite blanket to use when he was sick. 

It was soft and warm and was the same blanket he’d clutched between his tiny fingers the day his parents dropped him off at Ben and May’s that time they never came back. It was the same blanket he sobbed into the night Ben took his last breath. It was red, gold and printed with a flying, cartoon Iron Man. It was safety cloaked over him, and Peter didn’t even have enough energy to care about the consequences of Mr. Stark finding out his childhood comfort object was Iron Man merch. 

“Really kid?” asked Mr. Stark. He shook one of Peter’s feet. “Sit up.” 

“I don’t need a doctor.” His face was smashed against his sheets, and he doubted any of those words were recognizable to anyone except him.   

Mr. Stark released a breath, then Peter felt his bed dip with his weight. Before he could do anything to stop him, Mr. Stark slid his socks over his feet for him. Next came his shoes, and without much warning, a hand gripping his arm and pulling him into a sitting position.

And that was when Peter learned Mr. Stark was truly crazy, that moment he came at him with his winter coat.

He leaned back on his hands and dodged him. “Oh my god, Mr. Stark. It’s _September_.” 

“I wouldn’t care if it were July. There’s a chill in the air and you know you don’t handle the cold well.” 

_A chill_.

Tony Stark was standing in his bedroom, losing his mind, over a chill.

“And you’re sick,” he added. 

Peter glared at him again, held out strong as long as he could before realizing Mr. Stark wouldn’t let him rest until they got this unnecessary trip over with. He stretched out his arms and let Mr. Stark help him into his coat, and that would have been enough, if it were anyone except Mr. Stark, but he wasn’t happy until Peter was wearing a hat, gloves, and a scarf.

“There,” he said, and patted his head. “Now we’re all set.”

Peter tried to deepen his glare, to turn his pathetic into something threatening, but from the way Mr. Stark’s lips twitched, he didn’t think he was very successful.

“Alrighty, let’s go get you better,” said Mr. Stark. He pealed Peter up from the bed. Before he could guide him out of the bedroom, he circled back for his Iron Man blanket. Mr. Stark gave him a raised eyebrow but didn’t make any comments. 

Happy waited for them with a car out on the street outside, and once Peter and Mr. Stark were both settled into the backseat, Peter played with the window switch before giving Tony a look.

“Is this kidnapping?” 

“No.” 

“I don’t know, I’m being taken against my will, and May doesn’t know where I am. I think that counts.”

Mr. Stark clenched his jaw and stayed silent while the car stayed stalled outside of Peter’s apartment building. A couple of long seconds ticked by, then Mr. Stark made eye contact with Happy through the rearview mirror. 

“Hogan, drive,” he said, as he took his cellphone from his pocket and called May at work on her cellphone.

* 

“Well,” said the doctor. Peter clutched the edges of his Iron Man blanket and watched her from the bed as she peeled off her plastic gloves and tossed them into the trash can. “You’ve definitely got a sick kid.” 

“What is it? What does he have?” Mr. Stark hovered over him, just inches away from the bed, and his face was comically worried. If Peter hadn’t felt so miserable, he might he laughed, because he knew exactly what the doctor was going to say before she said it. 

“A virus,” she deadpanned. “He needs fluids, and rest.” 

“That’s all?” 

“It’ll pass on its own,” she told him. She stopped by the door on her way out and looked at Mr. Stark. “In the future, Mr. Stark, 101.1 is not a brain melting fever. It’s relatively normal.” 

She left the room, off to assist in whatever the Avenger’s medical team did whenever there weren’t any hurt or sick Avengers, and Mr. Stark sunk down on the bed near Peter’s feet. Peter tried to catch Mr. Stark’s eyes, and once he had, he tried to look as smug as he could with watery eyes, a pale face and huddled underneath a blanket. 

“Told you.” 

Mr. Stark offered a weary sigh. “I guess you were right. I should’ve left you alone.” 

“No,” Peter blurted out, the word coming before he could stop it. “Umm, just, I don’t want to be alone.” 

He didn’t like being alone, but sick and alone, well that was much worse, and maybe May would’ve stayed home from work if Peter had asked her too, but he couldn’t do that. They needed the money, and he was getting too old to have a parent sit with him just because he had a basic fever. 

Suddenly he was thankful for Mr. Stark’s ability to take a virus and turn it into Ebola. 

Mr. Stark smiled at him. It looked more like a grimace, but Peter was starting to learn that was the way he smiled when he was trying very hard not to feel things. It was genuine, even if he was putting every effort into making it appear otherwise, and when that failed, he went with a distraction, a change of topic.

He pinched the fabric of Peter’s Iron Man blanket together, made a face, then let it drop.  

“What’s the deal with the blanket?” 

“It’s soft.” Peter brought the edges up closer to his shoulder and wrapped his knuckles under it.

“It’s ratty,” said Mr. Stark. He pointed to a spot that was a shade darker than the original red. “And stained.” 

“Spaghetti O’s.” 

Mr. Stark raised an eyebrow at him. 

“After my parents died May and Ben could only get me to eat if it was Spaghetti O’s, and I wouldn’t ever let go of this blanket, so May taught me how to wear it like a cap and well, I was a pretty messy kid.”

“Couldn’t be without it just long enough to eat, huh?” 

“It made me feel safe.”

_Iron Man made me feel safe._

That part went unsaid, but Peter knew Mr. Stark caught it. He looked away and grimaced again and Peter could he struggling and failing in his battle to not feel things. One of these days, Peter was going to break him, but it wasn’t that day. Mr. Stark shook his head a little, then bit out a laugh. 

“I can’t believe your aunt fed you spaghetti _from a can_.”

“You make it sound so scandalous.” 

“Because my mother would never allow me to eat spaghetti _out of a can_.”

“Maybe you should try it sometime, Mr. Stark, you’re all grown up now.”

Mr. Stark frowned at him, patted his knee, and softened his voice. “Let’s get you back to bed. You’re becoming delirious.”

“The couch, not the bed,” said Peter, as he sat up. “And can you get a wheelchair? I don’t feel like walking.” Mr. Stark looked at him like he was about to say no, so Peter continued, “I wouldn’t want to pass out on the way to the suite.”

Mr. Stark went and found a wheelchair and pushed Peter all the way to the living room portion of his and Pepper’s suite in Avenger’s tower. Peter had to only stand up and walk long enough to put himself and his blanket on the couch. It was comfortable. Not more comfortable than the bed in his bedroom at the tower, but decidedly less lonely.

He planned on turning his pathetic to sway Tony into watching movies with him. 

“Please, Mr. Stark,” said Peter, after his initial no. “You brought me all the over here  _in the chill_ and I just want to watch Star Wars with you.” 

“Fine,” he said. “Ask me to make you Spaghetti O’s and I’m drawing the line.” 

Peter grinned as Mr. Stark dropped on the couch next to him. He didn’t think he’d be feeling up to eating anything for awhile, anyway.

A couple of hours later, Mr. Stark brought him a Glacier Cherry Gatorade from the freezer, and Peter sipped on the frozen slush through a bendy straw while the opening crawl for the next Star Wars movie played. 

He shifted in the cushions, scooting closer to Mr. Stark until he was so close, he could put his head down on Mr. Stark’s chest. He let him rest there, and after a few seconds, wrapped his arm around him. He was better than the blanket, but Peter was still happy he had both.

And if, a few weeks later, Spider-Man crawled up Avenger’s Tower and into Tony Stark’s suite to drop off a crate of Spaghetti O’s and old pictures of Peter Parker wrapped up in an Iron Man blanket as a kid, and if he stuck around on the windows to spy on Mr. Stark as opened the crate, made a can of Spaghetti O’s and gaze at said pictures with water in his eyes, he didn’t tell a soul.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on Tumblr if you want 
> 
> [hailing-stars](https://hailing-stars.tumblr.com)


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